Most if not all cardboard pizza boxes are made from recycled pulp material. While the use of recycled pulp material for pizza boxes may be less expensive and more environmentally friendly than the use of virgin pulp material, if the recycled pulp materials was made from salvaged printed paper, the chemicals found in some printing inks can remain in the recycled pulp material. If this recycled pulp material is then used for packaging food, such as pizza, then the food can be exposed to those chemicals. In an article published in Science Daily (Nov. 30, 2007) reprinted from Wiley-Blackwell (Nov. 30, 2007), Chemicals From Recycled Cardboard May Contaminate Take-out Food, Researchers Say, a study conducted in Italy of pizza boxes from sixteen different pizza “take-away” restaurants found that the pizza boxes made from recycled material contained unacceptable levels of diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP), a plasticizer used as an additive to printing inks. The article states: “With take-out pizzas, hot food is placed inside the [recycled] cardboard box, and so there is a high chance that the food will be exposed to any volatile chemicals in the [recycled] cardboard such as plasticers . . . . To avoid this contamination, the boxes should be made from unrecycled materials.” Id.
In the United States, pursuant to federal regulations 21 C.F.R. § 176.260, the use of recycled material for food packaging that comes from industrial waste or which is salvaged from used paper is permitted, provided that the industrial waste or salvaged paper excludes (i) that which contains poisonous or deleterious substances capable of being retained in the recovered pulp and migrating to food, or (ii) that which is from paper used for shipping or handling any such substances. However, although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has regulations for food grade packaging, there are no official FDA guidelines for testing recycled paper to establish whether the recycled paper has suitable purity for packaging of foods.
Accordingly, there is a need in the food packaging industry, which allows the continued use of recycled cardboard for food packaging but which avoids direct contact of the food with the recycled cardboard to minimize potential migration of deleterious substances from the recycled material to the food.
In addition to concerns over food contamination when using recycled material, it would be desirable, with hot food in particular, to keep the food raised above the bottom of the container to avoid the food becoming soggy from condensation within the container or from grease or other juices dripping from the food. For example, when a hot pizza is removed from an oven and placed in a cardboard box, the steam from the hot pizza will begin to condense and collect at the bottom of the box causing the pizza crust to become soggy.
As with takeout and delivered pizzas, frozen pizzas and take-and-bake pizzas are also typically placed on recycled cardboard which may be removed prior to cooking the pizza or the cardboard may be formed into an oven-ready tray intended to go directly into the oven. With oven-ready trays, the cooked pizza is typically cut and served directly from the tray. Likewise with the pizza's that are removed from the cardboard prior to cooking, the cooked pizza is often placed back on the cardboard after cooking for cutting and serving. Thus, the use of recycled cardboard for frozen and take-and-bake pizzas presents the same concerns as using recycled cardboard for fresh delivered pizzas and also presents the same issues with the pizza becoming soggy.